So Few Go Here Nowadays

Climbing out of a steep canyon in hot weather is the very definition of insanity, so with summer approaching, today I made perhaps my last hike on Euchre Bar Trail, until cooler temperatures return.

I wanted to try a new spot, about 0.25 mile upriver from where I panned last week. Google Earth shows a large rock outcrop along the North Fork American River. It looked promising for gold.

This hike being exploratory, I traveled light, my only panning gear a plastic pan and a trowel, inside my Osprey pack. The Home Depot five gallon bucket, folding shovel, and other gear remained at home.

The trail upstream beyond the footbridge at Euchre Bar is in need of maintenance. It's impossible not to brush against the poison oak. (I got poison oak on my hands from last week's hike.) In one spot, three trees had fallen across the trail, in close proximity, but it was easy to climb over them and continue. I think maintenance is done by volunteers, and that may be a long time coming.

I reached a terrace overlooking the rock outcrop. A terrace is a level spot carved into a hillside by the Forty Niners to make their camps. The outcrop and river were some fifty feet below, and the descent was steep. The place looked inviting for gold and I wanted to get down there. I poked about but found no safe route. During the Gold Rush I'm sure there was a simple trail from the terrace to the river, but now the area is overgrown with vegetation. Should I try to make it to the river? Absolutely not. Few hikers starting from Iron Point travel beyond the bridge at Euchre Bar. I could very well be the only person on this section of the trail today. The hillsides are tall (over 2000 feet above the river) and steep, and should trouble come there is no cell phone reception down here. Even getting a Personal Locator Beacon signal out is questionable. The more hiking partners you have, the more risks you can take. When you hike alone, you have to use common sense.

Before turning around, I stood for a few minutes looking at the river. At my feet was an iron pipe, built of plates and rivets, some 12 inches in diameter and several feet long. It likely dated to the late 1800s. Nearby was a water ditch used for mining operations.

So few go here nowadays, but the canyon was once busy with activity. The Nisenan of course were here, for centuries, and in the rock outcrops by the river one can easily find concave holes where the women ground seeds for meal. I don't think the fur trappers working the Sacramento Valley made it this far upriver, so the first non-natives here were likely the Forty Niners. They made their camps up and down the river, and scooped gold from the gravels with tin cups and whatever else was handy. They cut the trees on the hillsides and built large flumes through which they diverted the river, so they could reach the gravels at bedrock. The period of placer mining ended, and next came the hard rock mines, the Pioneer and the Southern Cross and the American Eagle, to name a few. The mine operators built dams and installed electrical generators. They slid stamp mills on skids down the steep hillsides and set them up by the river. There were telephones down here!

So much activity. In the September 12, 1896 San Francisco Call newspaper is a letter from a Mr. Muller, regarding trout fishing here. "The scenery along this route is grand, and the American is about the finest in the State for trout." He talks of anglers intending to spend a month on the river. He complains about mine employees illegally using explosives to get fish.

And then the mines shut down, some 100 years ago, and the people left. Equipment too large and heavy to carry out of the canyon remained in place. Fires destroyed the buildings. The trees grew back.

The iron pipes and generators and stamp mill parts, and the terraces and water ditches, remain to tell of the past activity. As I walk about these, I think about how hard it is to get to the river nowadays, there are so few access points. Yet, people once just went up and down it.